Tsingtao [Qingdao], Diocese of

TSINGTAO [QINGDAO], Diocese of. - On the coast of the Yellow Sea, in the southeastern part of the province of Shantung, in northern China.

It was erected as an apostolic prefecture on 11 February 1925 with 12 civil subprefectures of the mission of Yenchow (v.) and was entrusted, like the mother mission, to the Society of the Divine Word. On 14 June 1928 it was elevated to an apostolic vicariate; on 1 July 1937 it ceded 5 civil subprefectures to give life to the apostolic vicariate of Ichow (v.) and on 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, it was elevated to a diocese, suffragan of Tainan. It has an area of 17,000 sq km. As of 30 June 1950, out of a total population of about 3,500,000 inhabitants, Catholics numbered 23,588; priests 28, of whom 10 were Chinese; nuns 87, most of them Chinese. Among the works were 2 hospitals, 7 medicine dispensaries, 6 orphanages, 29 schools. The beginnings of Christian preaching in the territory of T. are due to the Verbite religious, who arrived in the southern region of Shantung in 1882 (v. YENCHOW). At the time of its erection (1925) T. counted 20,000 Catholics, converted, the oldest of them, about 35-40 years earlier. In the territory ceded for the erection of Ichow, in 1937, there were 15,587 faithful. Among the missionaries worthy of particular mention are the first apostolic vicar of southern Shantung, Msgr. Giovanni Battista von Anzer (1886-1904), and Fr. Giuseppe Freinademetz, who labored there greatly and with abundant fruits.